


Operation: SILENCED SONGBIRD

by Noscere



Series: Operation Rejected Asylum (XCOM) [2]
Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5617834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the psionic troopers in the world can't save you from drunken, slightly racist songs.<br/>(Or as Sergeant Said Tariq will soon find out, Major Zhang.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Operation: SILENCED SONGBIRD

For all of Sergeant Said Tariq’s psionic potential, aural dampening was not one of his powers. The ability to block out undesirable sounds would be incredibly useful in and out of the field. Said Tariq dreamed of the day he could block out the roar of a rail gun firing right next to his head and save his hearing. He could cut Dr. Vahlen’s “Refrain from using explosives! We need those corpses intact!” out of his channel. Even better, Said would never again listen to the smack and wet slap of flesh as his sister made out with fellow abductee Captain Durand. Or the wetter, louder smacking and slapping of flesh from his fellow XCOM operatives on their bunks.

“Chilong, it's never ending!”

Timothy Kjelberg, nickname “Pew”, had a lovely voice. When Kjelberg wasn’t drunk, whaling on a badly tuned guitar, and insistent on serenading Major Shaojie Zhang with what the XCOM operative deemed, “the song of his people.”

Said briefly considered the bottle of vodka sitting behind the Commissary counter. Too bad alcohol didn’t work on Psi operatives.

On the couch across the lounge, his sister had two cushions – the only cushions in this damned base after someone used the rest for a “training exercise” – firmly clamped over her ears.

Said screwed up his eyes and sent a tendril of psionic energy over to his sister. “ _You’re not going to help me?_ ”

Fatima couldn’t quite master mind-speech like her brother. She spoke like she fought: a raging cyclone of psionic energy that threatened to tear minds apart. But the expression on her face was clear. _You’re on your own._

_“Traitor._ ”

“Ling long, I really want you!” Kjelberg dropped from the barstool onto his knees. “Ting tong, I don’t actually know what that means!”

Said groaned internally and prayed to every god out there that Major Zhang wasn’t in the base.

His sister rolled her eyes. “Better if the Major’s here. Pew’ll get his face smashed in,” Fatima said, just barely audible over the shriek of metallic strings. She nodded at the nearly empty liter bottle of vodka. “It’ll help his hangover better than any drug.”

Said blew out a breath. “As the team Medic, I’m very sure that won’t help.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Bloodhound.”

Fatima made to chuck a cushion at him. The second the cushion left her ear, she winced and immediately pressed it to the side of her head.

“Ching chong, it's never ending!” The guitar’s neck bashed against the bar stool, toppling it. “Ling long, my head is spinning!”

“You think he knows any other verses?”

“He’s no Freddie Mercury, that’s for sure.” Tariq walked over and righted the chair.

"Gotta admit, it's catchy."

“Start humming it, sis, and I won't suppress the next alien that decides you'd look better full of holes." Tariq shook his fellow soldier. "Sober up, man. You don’t want to piss off Strike One’s Heavy. He was in the freaking triads!”

Kjelberg had the dopey grin of a man either drunk off his ass, or high on XCOM's patented happy-juice (officially known as combat stims.)

“Dude, he’llllll love it! Everybody needs some love!” Kjelberg slapped the side of the guitar. The strings screamed like Chryssalids crisping, freshly fried by a MEC Trooper’s flamethrower.

“Come on, Pew. Don't piss a man like him off! Do you even know what Chilong mean?”

“Hornless dragon, if that was not rhetorical.”

The Psi operative slowly turned around.

Major Shaojie Zhang stood in the doorway: Titan armor scorched to hell, plasma burns littering his face.

He did not look amused.  
        

 

 

Official Things X-COM Operatives are not allowed to do, Volume I:

  1. Any operative caught playing “Chilong Tingtong” will have their punishment administered by Major Zhang himself.



**Author's Note:**

> All credit goes to Rogue Vector and the Space Battle Forums for coming up with these ideas. Go check out the entire list (and some rejected ideas) on the Google Doc or the forum!
> 
> Song lyrics to "Ching Chong Ting Tong" belong to Jimmy Wong.


End file.
